CPU high because swap usage
Swap activity is a strong signal that memory pressure is contributing to high CPU.
Common symptoms
- Performance degrades sharply
- Disk activity rises unexpectedly
- CPU and latency spike together
Likely causes
- RAM exhaustion
- Too many processes
- Large data sets in memory
Evidence to look for
Swap in/out active
Disk IO rises during CPU spikes
Available memory near zero
What it usually means
The system is spending CPU moving memory pages to and from disk, which drags everything else down.
What to do next
- 1Reduce memory pressure
- 2Lower process count
- 3Add RAM or reduce working set size
See what's causing your CPU
cpum.ai turns CPU, process, disk, and memory signals into plain-English explanations with evidence.
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